Xsd.exe or Svcutil.exe to convert XSD schema to a class

c# xml xsd svcutil.exe
Jayesh Bhoot picture Jayesh Bhoot · Mar 23, 2012 · Viewed 16.1k times · Source

Is it so that svcutil tool is recommended over xsd tool? I didn't see that as a confirmed statement, but it did seem so. The reason that I am confused over this is that I generated a class using both the tools. But, I got a better class using xsd. The XSD schema consists of DataContracts only.

I used the following command for svcutil:

svcutil path-to\xyz.xsd /language:C# /dataContractOnly /importxmltypes /out:path-to\class.cs

This generated the desired classes. But, it contained only XmlNode[] objects for the fields.

Then, I used the following command for xsd:

xsd.exe /c path-to\xyz.xsd /out:path-to\class.cs

It generated much better classes than svcutil did. Most of the fields were converted as desired.

Should I have any reason to believe that I should use svcutil over xsd then?

Answer

daryal picture daryal · Mar 23, 2012

As far as I know, there are some limitations with XSD.exe; for instance when there is a Dictionary<,> in the class, XSD.exe can not generate a proper XSD; as Dictionary does not implement IXmlSerializable.

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